Soup Sunday: French onion soup

Welcome to the Super Duper Long Weekend Edition of Soup Sunday! Since we had a long weekend, I decided to do a soup that was a bit more special than my “dump stuff in a pot” usuals.

I started by making beef stock the day before, roasting bones and vegetables before letting them simmer together for hours. In hindsight, I should’ve doubled the amount of bones (I had just over a kilo) for a more meaty flavour.

Sunday was spent knee deep in onions. I ended up peeling, slicing and cooking 3 kilos of onions. Yes, 3 fricken kilos. (Actually, Bro helped me peel some of the onions. Peeling onions is a pain in the arse!) I had to drag out my biggest pot to start softening all the onions – a pot that mum and dad brought us when they were last over. I don’t know what other parents buy for their children, but my parents give us pots (on a previous visit we received the magic pot).

I followed
a recipe on the Gourmet Traveller website (although I made 1 & 1/2 times the quantity). After the onions had spent the first twenty minutes in the pot with the lid on, the heat was turned down low and I let them cook for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally.



After the long cooking, the onions had collapsed into a much smaller pile, and were soft, sweet and golden. I added the stock and herbs and let it simmer for another 30-40 minutes and it was finally ready! It had only taken all afternoon.

My patience was rewarded though, it was a pretty good soup. My only complaint was that I had let it simmer down too much and I thought the soup was too thick. And I'm not sure I would make it again, it really does take a long time!



We had invited Benisa over to partake in Soup Sunday, and naturally I had to serve them dessert. I opted for apple sponge pudding.



Instead of doing one big pudding, I baked it in individual ramekins. When I portioned out the pudding batter amongst the ramekins, I realised that I didn't have enough so ended up doubling the amount of batter. Looking back, I would skip the mixed spice in the batter, and just use cinnamon. And if I'm being picky, the sponge turned out a bit firm - I may have overbaked it.

Nevertheless, if you ignore my nitpicking, it was another successful edition of Soup Sunday. The only question now is, what's coming up this week...?

Links:

French onion soup from Gourmet Traveller

Apple sponge pudding from taste.com.au

Apple pie with custard

This apple pie recipe is from an issue of Delicious and is supposedly Ben O'Donoghue's Grandma's recipe. Now, far be it for me to question a recipe that belongs to someone's gran (respect for your elders and all that), but it did raise a couple of queries. Normally when I make pastry, I add some water to bring the dough together. With this recipe, the pastry was supposed to come together with just the egg yolks (i.e. no water). I was dubious, but was willing to try it. Well, after trying it out, there was no way my dough was going to come together, so I had to add a little bit of iced water. Once I had passed that hurdle, I then found that I had a ton of dough! I had enough dough for two pies. I used half and stashed half in my freezer.

These little pies are from my second batch. They didn't turn out very attractive - the pastry shrunk A LOT in the oven - but at least they tasted good! The pastry was crumbly and buttery, and somehow slightly flakey at the bottom of my pies. Maybe gran does know best after all.



Ben's Gran's apple pie with custard

From Delicious magazine August 2008

Serves 6

1 kg Granny Smith apples
1 cup (220g) caster sugar, plus extra to sprinkle
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 cloves
1 star anise

Pastry

3 cups (450g) plain flour
1/3 cup (40g) custard powder
1 cup (150g) caster sugar
350g chilled unsalted butter, chopped
3 egg yolks, plus 1 lightly beaten egg to brush

Custard

300ml each milk and pure (thin) cream
1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped
8 egg yolks
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar

For pastry, place flour, custard powder, sugar and a pinch of salt in a food processor. Add butter and process until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add yolks and process until pastry comes together into a smooth ball. (Add a couple of tablespoons of iced water if the pastry doesn't come together.) Divide into 2, then knead each into flat discs. Enclose in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, peel and core apples. Place in a pan over medium heat with sugar, juice and spices. Cook fo 10 minutes or until fruit is tender but still holds its shape. Cool, then discard spices.

For custard, place milk, cream, vanilla pod and seeds in a pan over medium heat. Bring to just below boiling point then set aside for 15 minutes to infuse. Meanwhile, whisk yolks and sugar in a bowl until thick and pale, then gradually whisk in warm cream mixture to combine (discard the vanilla pod). REturn mixture to pan over low heat. Stir with a wooden spoon for approx 6 minutes or until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Strain through a sieve. Cool, then cover surface with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. Chill until needed.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Divide one of the pastry discs in half, and roll each half to 3mm thick, 28mm circles (the other pastry disc can be frozen for later use). Place 1 circle on a lined baking tray. Pile the apple mixture into the centre, leaving a 3cm border, then brush border with egg. Top with remaining pastry, press down border, then trim edges into a neat circle. Pinch edges with your fingers to seal. Brush top with beaten egg, then bake for 30 minutes. Remove, sprinkle with caster sugar, then bake for a further 10 minutes until golden. Serve with the custard.

Apple & Oat pancakes

Generally for brunch on the weekends I prefer something savoury, like eggs. Alastair is a fan of the sweet brunch so sometimes I indulge him and make pancakes.

In saying that though, if I had to pick one pancake recipe to make for the rest of my life - this would be it. These are my favourite pancakes ever! It's like eating apple porridge in a pancake. They're not fancy, and they're not attractive (I can never get them round because the batter is so thick!) but they taste good.

The original recipe had pecans, if you're into that, add 1/2 cup of roughly chopped pecans to the batter.

Adapted from a recipe in Australian Table July 2004.

Serves 4.

1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 1/3 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1/3 cup caster sugar (use less, say 1/4 cup, if you like to drown your pancakes in syrup. I prefer less sugar.)
1 cup milk (if the batter is too thick, add more)
60g butter, melted
3 apples (I like granny smiths), cored, peeled and coarsely grated

1: Combine oats and boiling water in a bowl and stand for 5 minutes. Whisk in egg.
2: Sift flour and baking power together, then mix into oat mixture with sugar.
3: Stir in milk and melted butter, followed by apples.
4: Melt some butter in non-stick frying pan on medium heat. When warm enough, add 1/4 cup measures of batter. Cook for several minutes until bubbles start to appear on top, then turn and cook the other side for several minutes until cooked. Repeat with remaining butter.
5: Serve with butter and maple syrup.